Note: This post is part of my “Museums Project“, a collection of 200+ high-concept ideas for museums.
What’s In The Museum?
Is boring stuff still boring when you put it in a museum?
Is interest really just a matter of making people curious about nuance?
Does everything shine brighter under a spotlight?
This museum takes the most boring sh*t you can think of and tries to convince you to take an interest in it. Because maybe it’s not so boring after all.
Paint drying, waiting, the DMV, being put on hold, classic literature, silent movies, the opera. Ok, obviously “boring” is subjective and not everyone thinks that the DMV is boring. Each exhibit will already have some fans (who might take offense for the inclusion).
But most people will not be fans.
The museum is not just boring objects, but boring concepts, conversations, ideas, people, animals. Anything that elicits the feelings of boredom (from a majority of people).
The subject of boringness itself can be explained and depicted. What makes something boring? What makes us bored?
I don’t know if anyone has studied boringness, but some of the characteristics and types of boringness that come to my mind are:
Stuff that is way over your head.
Stuff that is way under your head.
Stuff that doesn’t have much to it.
Stuff that you are already very familiar with.
Stuff that has no dynamic qualities.
Stuff that is so erratic and random that you just tune out.
Does the museum give people the experience of boredom? I don’t think that would be very popular. I think it should make boring things interesting. Perhaps the name of the museum should be “The Museum of Boring Things That Are Actually Interesting” or “The Museum of Boring Things That We Made Not Boring”.
An item or concept can be taken from boringness through a series of stages to where the visitor finds it no longer boring. How could you design the most boring thing ever? And then how could you make it interesting?
Non-Boring to Boring
The museum might also have an area where we take non-boring things and make them boring. Shark attacks, volcanos, car chases, roller coasters, crash landings, etc. How do you take the principles of boringness and apply them to these things in a way such that no one is interested in them any longer?
Maybe there are two objects, one boring and one not. Then we show how to apply the principles of boringness and we transform each of them into their opposite. On one hand we have paint drying and on the other we have a angry wasp nest on a submarine. How do we make them their opposite?